The present invention relates to the field of games, sports and athletic competitions, and more particularly to sporting competitions involving goal-keepers.
There are several sports, including soccer, lacrosse (outdoor and indoor), ice hockey and field hockey, in which two teams compete against each other based on points scored by shooting a ball or puck into the opponent's goal. In the conventional rules of these goal-scoring sports, the role of the goal-keeper or “goalie” is principally defensive, i.e., to block or “save” shots from entering the goal. While the defensive skills of the goal-keeper may be important in limiting scoring by the opposing team, the evaluation of goalie skills is obscured because no scoring is assigned to them in conventional play. Moreover, because a goal-keeper is part of a larger team whose offensive and defensive skills differ from those of competing teams, it is difficult to isolate the performance of a goalie from that of his/her team in order to evaluate his/her skill level.
The present invention provides a non-team competitive game in which scoring is based on the defensive skills of the goal-keeper in saving and clearing shots on the goal and handling the ball/puck effectively. While a number of goal tenders compete in the game, the competition is not head-to-head between goalies. Instead, in order to maintain a uniform standard of evaluation, each competing goal-tender faces the same group of selected shooters, executes passes to the same groups of targets, and negotiates the same ball/puck-handling obstacles. Points are awarded to each goalie based on saved shots, effective and speedy ball/puck-handling and possession, and successful clears.
Those goal-keepers scoring the most points advance from the preliminary rounds to playoff rounds and a championship round. In this way, the Guardian Game provides a set of objective standards for evaluating the relative skill levels of goal tenders, so as to be useful to coaches and recruiters.